The present invention relates generally to network load balancing and more particularly to implementing adaptive load sharing to balance network traffic.
Servers supporting mission-critical applications (i.e. financial transactions, database access, corporate intranets, etc.) must exchange traffic across data networks. Moreover, Additional time sensitive applications (i.e. Voice over IP, Video) need to be carried across networks. Additionally, networks need the ability to scale performance to handle large numbers of end user requests without creating unwanted delays.
Network load balancing distributes traffic to multiple paths inside the network, each path going across different network equipments (routers). Network load balancing transparently partitions the end user requests among the network paths.
Conventionally, the network routing protocols send traffic according to the shortest path between the end user and the application. Usually, the shortest path is determined based on static criteria such as least number of intermediate devices in the path (less hops), or larger capacity links (in terms of bandwidth). As the number of end users utilizing an application increases, the shortest path becomes congested leading to delays, jitters, and eventually packet loss, while they may exist alternate paths (less preferred) which are not congested.